Once Again, New England In For Big But Uncertain Storm

A storm is forecast in New England this week, but
its effects are very uncertain.  

I feel a little bit like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," but once again I'm watching a pretty big storm headed toward New England, but I still have no clue exactly what will happen with that.

If this sounds familiar, it should. A few days before Thanksgiving, forecasters were all scratching their heads over a storm headed into the Northeast, with uncertain predictions of heavy snow and rain.

The storm ultimately dumped six inches to more than a foot of heavy wet snow on the Northeast, especially New England, causing travel problems, and worse, wide spread power failures that lasted into Thanksgiving and beyond in parts of the Northeast.

Now, we're faced with another oncoming nor'easter, and this one is more tricky to forecast than the one that hit the day before Thanksgiving.

Most nor'easters chug up the coast, or just off the coast, heading at a steady pace from, say North Carolina to Cape Cod and on up into the Maritime provinces of Canada.

This one looks to form off the mid-Atlantic coast, maybe even fairly far off the coast, then head northward, or north northwestward toward New England, which is kind of an odd path.

Worse, once the storm gets to southeastern New England, it looks like it wants to meander around that area of the country instead of just marching off to Canada like most storms do.

This weird potential outcome for the storm makes forecasting its effects much harder. How much warm air will flow into New England from the east as the storm sits there? Will it be heavy rain?

There will be snow, but how far inland will the heaviest snow set up? Just in the mountains? Or in most areas of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine?  Will it rain hard enough along the coast to cause flooding? What about storm surges and coastal flooding?

The details are still murky. But suffice it to say, Tuesday through at least Thursday are looking quite stormy in New England. I just don't know yet what kind of storm any particular spot will get.

When storms stall out and meander, like this one could, they gradually just sit there and weaken. So by around Friday,  the storm might still be around, but will be petering out. Eventually, it will just skulk out to sea, and things will improve by the end of the week.

Stay tuned for later forecasts. We'll have a somewhat better idea what to expect by tomorrow.